hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (06/06/85)
In general, I am sympathetic with Biblical criticism. However I would like to point out a few problems with some things that have been said recently. >From: popyack@uvm-cs.UUCP (Poppery L. Jeffayack) > It is not certain or clear that Jesus claimed divinity for himself. I think this is slightly misleading. This statement implies that there is some sort of evidence for a Jesus who did not claim to be God's Son. I don't think there is. Almost every story and saying in the Gospels deals in one way or the other with Jesus' authority. If we regard this aspect as erroneous, and try to remove it, we end up with nothing. Various attempts have been made to purge the record of its Christological content. The idea was to get back to some sort of cleaned-up "purely historical" picture of Jesus. It simply doesn't work. You end up with a purely hypothetical construct. (This is the well-known failure of the "quest for the historical Jesus.") I think there are only two choices. - say that the NT is so biased that we simply don't have any historically reliable information about Jesus at all. (This is the position which Buchholz has taken, though his language is somewhat more diplomatic.) - consider that the Gospels got their view of Jesus' role from Jesus himself, even if they may have emphasized certain aspects of it. > the oldest Gospel, Mark, ends with an empty tomb and no mention of a > resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples (the most ancient versions). Be careful about circular arguments. There is no external evidence that Mark is the oldest Gospel. Indeed many early Church tradition says Matthew is. Scholars believe that Mark is earliest because his accounts appear to be more "primitive". That is, in a number of cases he makes the least of Jesus' authority, and seems to have the least "mythological" versions of many of the stories. If we assume that the stories gathered Christological elaborations over time, then the least elaborated gospel would be the earliest. That argument is fine. I think I even believe it. But we can't run the argument backwards. We can't use Mark's alleged age as an argument for the historicity of his accounts. The apparent historicity of his accounts is what caused us to conclude that his gospel was the earliest one in the first place. Also, I am curious what significance you see to the omission of appearance stories in Mark. Mark does say that Jesus will appear to the discipline in Galilee (16:7). And it has the empty tomb. It doesn't seem to be of great significance that no actual appearance stories are included. > The Gospel of John has Jesus saying "I am the Word". This concept has a > Greek cast to it, and was not likely to have been spoken by Jesus. The Word of God has a good Jewish tradition. God created the world by his Word. He gave Israel the Law. In later Judaism (i.e. right before Jesus' time), God's Wisdom, or his Word (the terms were used together), came to take on an almost independent existence. I'm not saying that the Word made flesh is orthodox Judaism. But it is a new idea that could easily have sprung from Jewish soil. (By the way, I do agree that large parts of Jesus' dialogs in John were constructed by the author. You just seem to have quoted a somewhat questionable argument for this.) > From: gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz) > > ...these stories are all told in the interests of mission, edification, > cult, or theology (especially Christology), and they have no > relationship to the question of historical reliable information." It is precisely this sort of thing that leads to fundamentalism. You have managed to convince conservatives that any understanding of how the gospel accounts grew discredits them completely. Since the fundamentalists have what they regard as good external evidence for many of the things asserted in the Gospels (namely, the power of Jesus in their own lives), they quite reasonably choose to reject the other half of the dicotomy. Most sources of historical information have known interests other than pure historiography. Many of them can be observed to have made errors, and to have shaped their accounts according to their own understanding of reality. That doesn't mean that there is no historical information present. Yes, we should realize the Gospel writers handled historical data differently than you would. But there is still history there.
mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (06/11/85)
In article <1064@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: >>>the oldest Gospel, Mark, ends with an empty tomb and no mention of a >>>resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples (the most ancient versions). >>> [popayack] >> Be careful about circular arguments. There is no external evidence that >> Mark is the oldest Gospel. Indeed many early Church tradition says >> Matthew >> is. Scholars believe that Mark is earliest because his accounts appear to >> be more "primitive". That is, in a number of cases he makes the least of >> Jesus' authority, and seems to have the least "mythological" versions of >> many of the stories. If we assume that the stories gathered >> Christological >> elaborations over time, then the least elaborated gospel would be the >> earliest. That argument is fine. I think I even believe it. But we >> can't run the argument backwards. We can't use Mark's alleged age as an >> argument for the historicity of his accounts. The apparent historicity >> of his accounts is what caused us to conclude that his gospel was the >> earliest one in the first place. [CHUCK HEDRICK] >Relative age is an important but no an all-encompassing factor here. The >fact alone that a "Gospel" exists that fails to mention Jesus' divinity and >resurrection at all says something. After all, if those things DID happen, >who on earth would leave such truly remarkable and alluring aspects out of >their account? Gad, the list of reasons one could give to account for the truncation of Mark is LONG. The author could have died before finishing it, or the end was torn off, or .... One can speculate endlessly, to little purpose. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Arthur Pewtey) (06/12/85)
>>> Be careful about circular arguments. There is no external evidence that >>> Mark is the oldest Gospel. Indeed many early Church tradition says >>> Matthew >>> is. Scholars believe that Mark is earliest because his accounts appear to >>> be more "primitive". That is, in a number of cases he makes the least of >>> Jesus' authority, and seems to have the least "mythological" versions of >>> many of the stories. If we assume that the stories gathered >>> Christological >>> elaborations over time, then the least elaborated gospel would be the >>> earliest. That argument is fine. I think I even believe it. But we >>> can't run the argument backwards. We can't use Mark's alleged age as an >>> argument for the historicity of his accounts. The apparent historicity >>> of his accounts is what caused us to conclude that his gospel was the >>> earliest one in the first place. [CHUCK HEDRICK] >>Relative age is an important but no an all-encompassing factor here. The >>fact alone that a "Gospel" exists that fails to mention Jesus' divinity and >>resurrection at all says something. After all, if those things DID happen, >>who on earth would leave such truly remarkable and alluring aspects out of >>their account? [ROSEN] > Gad, the list of reasons one could give to account for the truncation of > Mark is LONG. The author could have died before finishing it, or the end > was torn off, or .... One can speculate endlessly, to little purpose. Ah, but, Charles, it wasn't just stuff left off of the tail end, there was stuff left off at all points! Can you imagine writing the document and later saying "WHOOPS! I forgot all about the fact that Jesus' mother was a virgin and the miracle of the virgin birth. Let me go back and put that in... AAARRRGH!!!" I tend to doubt that he just forgot. I would tend to think that he didn't put it in for a reason (didn't happen), and that later authors of later works DID put it in for another reason (to spruce up the story---the same way modern authors have to add a required amount of sex and violence to get their books published, these guys had to add a little miracle story to get people interested: good words and deeds was NOT enough!). -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr